Barry Bergman

Barry Bergman reads from a podium

Praise for Proles:

“A vivid debut … a tough-minded meditation on politics, delusion, and survival in Nixon’s America.”

California magazine

“A humorous, weary, dark, and oddly tender portrait of a man who wants to join history and instead finds himself crushed beneath its machinery.”


Kirkus Reviews

“Bergman traces a world attentive to labor, place, and the quiet desire for meaning.... [Proles] lives in the external rather than the internal, a choice he handles with remarkable control.”

—Independent Book Review

“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles.”

—George Orwell, 1984

Get to know me:

an interview with the author, by the author (tough, but fair)

A few words from, and about, Proles

(Reading at Book Passage, Corte Madera, California, Nov. 8, 2025)
Video: Liza Gross

Barry Bergman seated at book-signing table

Photo: Lowry McFerrin